I see windows services that does absolutely nothing but just check for regular updates. It is just sitting there through your entire session waiting for the time to ripe for checking of update. Don’t do that kind of lame stuff.

A common requirement in business application is a scheduled process – call a webservice, process the data, and FTP the results to a business partner, for instance. Developers kick around possible solutions – BizTalk’s overkill, DTS won’t handle it well, what to do?

Invariably, someone suggests a Windows Service with a timer. Just as invariably, when you try to talk them out of it, they’ll condescendingly tell you that Windows Services are easy to write in .NET. “Trust me, it’s not hard – we’ll write a simple service with a timer which will do a simple time check…”

A Windows Service is the wrong solution to scheduling one-off custom processes. The right solution for scheduling simple processes is the Windows Task Scheduler. (Source: Jon Galloway)

I mean it’s just an update check. It’s not that a big deal to use a service for that.